God's Light Tour Homepage

We had a great time visiting with the Fulghams at their farm in Doylestown! The kids got to swim and play basketball and generally blow off steam, and we got fed well too. Everyone raved about their host homes and I heard nothing but compliments on the kids’ behavior. They really can be polite when they want to be. 🙂

The choir sang several songs as part of the service in Doylestown and did a great job, especially for a morning service.

Yesterday we rode to Packanack Community Church in Wayne, NJ. A good college friend of ours, Carol Campbell, is a music professor at Patterson University, and a member of that church. This is the third time, I think, that she has set us up to sleep in their church. Their sanctuary is quite small, so we actually performed at another church close by. Their sanctuary is beautiful, and had great acoustics! Again, all of our audience were very complimentary, particularly the pastors of the two churches! I think we are a bit spoiled by being able to hear God’s Light every day on tour. It’s amazing to see the reactions of people who are not privileged to see them every day.

The service last night in Winchester was great! The choir performed well, especially for the first performance of tour. Winchester First UMC is a small church, but it is very much like home since we’ve been there before. So far tour has gone very well!

This morning we stopped for some tourist time at Intercourse, PA (insert joke here, but trust me, I’ve heard them all). After shopping and lunch the choir sang a few songs for the folks there, who were very grateful.

We just left the Liberty Bell, where the choir sang the Star Spangled Banner, and sang one song for a nice lady who asked on the way back to the bus. Now we’re headed up to Doylestown to the farm of former SFUMC members Bev and Jeff Fulgham. It will be nice for the kids to have some time to be off the bus for awhile.

Bev, Jeff, Ed Whittington, Terry & I used to play as a group in church very regularly when the Fulgham were still in Smyrna. Bev is an amazing piano and French Horn player, and Jeff plays a great trumpet also. They don’t know it yet, but I’m going to try to con them, or at least Bev, into playing the prelude with us in the morning. It’s a Joseph Martin arrangement of “Promised Land” that was our favorite tune to play as a band.

It’s been a great trip so far! I personally got pretty good sleep last night. I’ve seen some kids that chose to stay up late last night and are paying the price a bit today. Tour veterans know that you have to pace yourself or it’s miserable down the stretch. The ride up to Winchester, VA has been fine. Tonight we’ll do our first service, at a church we’ve visited several times previously. It’s always fun to see some of the same people who hosted us over 20 years ago!

Calvary Baptist Church was a great host church! They fed us well, both dinner Saturday and breakfast on Sunday morning. Their service is a contemporary service, so it’s right up our alley! The choir sang several songs before the service and about 4 during the service, and sounded great!

If you’re reading this you probably already know that the homecoming concert was awesome as well!

So to summarize this tour, I have to say that I’m impressed with this group. Drama was minimal, even though we had lackluster air-conditioning on bus 2 for much of the trip, and the kids responded anytime they were asked to sing, whether it was in between the rainstorms at Mt. Rushmore, or outside the hotel in Keystone, for the restaurant and hotel workers. A few of the girls even sang for some random folks in Wall Drug! All along our tour, we heard how great it was to see that many kids who were willing to be part of this kind of ministry. In an era when both church attendance and youth choirs are declining, we stand firm in our commitment to bringing God’s Light to anyone who will hear us!

Yours in Christ, Jeff.

I’m losing track of days. I had to go look at all the other posts to figure out what day was what.

On Thursday we went to the Mall of America for awhile, and then to the Wisconsin Dells. The Mall of America has a small amusement park in the middle, so it’s a fun place to hang out for awhile. My group rode a few rides, ate some lunch, and played some putt-putt. There was a group packing lunches for kids who rely on school lunches and don’t have them in the summer, so we decided to work on that for awhile too. God’s Light packed so many lunches that they had to shut down for a bit so they could save some food for others to pack.

In the afternoon we bussed it up to the Wisconsin Dells to eat dinner. Wisconsin Dells is a tourist place, kind of like Pigeon Forge, TN. It was nice to stay in a hotel again and get a shower.

On Friday we rode down to Chicago, ate lunch at the Navy Pier, and took a speedboat ride on Lake Michigan that got us all pretty wet.

On Friday night we had one of the coolest experiences that I’ve ever had on tour! We rode down to St. John’s, IN to St. John the Evangelist church. It’s a large Catholic Church that has a wonderful prayer walk. They’ve spent a lot of time and money building a beautiful prayer walk with many bronze statues of the stations of the cross and other scenes from the last day before the crucifixion. The walk took about 45 minutes. As we started the walk, it started to rain. I think that might have been a God thing, because there was even some thunder in the distance in some appropriate spots in the narration at the various stops. As we reached the last scene, which is the ascension, the rain stopped and a beautiful rainbow appeared!

After the prayer walk we walked next door to the actual church. Their sanctuary is very new, and magnificent! They fed us dinner and then gave us a tour of their sanctuary. The choir sang a bit, and the acoustics were amazing!

We slept in their school, not far away. Yesterday we just bussed it down to Calvary Baptist Church in Murfreesboro, TN for our last night ceremonies. Their church is really beautiful, and they have been great hosts. I’m looking forward to singing for them this morning.

This has been a great trip, certainly one of my favorites! The kids have really stepped up when asked, and have done well in the services. I think you’re in for a real treat when we get home tonight.

All we did yesterday was bus it up to Edina, MN. The weather was good and there wasn’t much traffic so we got to the church early. It was nice to have time for a good long warmup.

The performance went well! It was nice to see Justin and Chelsea Arnold. My middle brother, Kevin, and his wife, Janet, live in Golden Valley, near St. Paul, and they came over to see us also. They were just in Georgia in March. This may be some sort of record, seeing them twice in three months.

Good Samaritan UMC is a beautiful church, and the congregation was wonderful! They fed us well last night, and were very gracious to us during and after the service.

We had our annual talent show last night. The talent show is a long-time tradition in God’s Light. It’s also a well-kept secret. All perfectly appropriate, mind you, but you have to go on tour to get the details.

Today is a “fun day”. We’re going to spend time at the Mall of America and then up to Wisconsin Dells, the Gatlinburg of Wisconsin. Tomorrow we’ll head down to Chicago.

Today we left Keystone and headed for Chamberlain. In the past we’ve come up through Minnesota and then out through Chamberlain to Mt. Rushmore. This year we’re doing it in reverse. We stopped at Wall Drug for lunch, and then drove through the Badlands before coming to the church.

This is my 5th time going to Mt. Rushmore with God’s Light, and I’m pretty sure we’ve stopped here all 5 times. It’s at least 4, I know that. It’s a small church, but their congregation has always welcomed us and fed us well. Chamberlain is a beautiful little town, right on the Missouri River, on I-90, the last town of any size you pass through on the way west to the Badlands. I-90 is mostly a tourist highway, so it’s all but empty at night. My first time in Chamberlain, I stayed in the home of a family who live only about 1/4 mile from I-90. We sat on their back patio, overlooking the river and in sight of the bridge on I-90 over the Missouri, and I don’t remember seeing a single car.

The service tonight went pretty well, only a few bobbles. We haven’t sung the whole program since Friday, and it showed in a couple of places, but overall it went well. Their congregation received us well, as always.

Tomorrow we head to Minneapolis to sing at a church there.

Today we didn’t leave the hotel until 11a, so we were able to have some free time. Most of the kids went shopping or swam in the hotel pool. I’ve been here before, so I decided to do some laundry instead.

At 11a we headed up to Custer National Monument, and then to Rushmore Cave. We’ve toured the cave each time I’ve been here, and it’s always an event. There is a large room at the back of the cave where we sing and do a communion service. Terry has a service that he has done each time, that involves a dramatic reading that’s very effective. I heard some good responses from the kids who were experiencing it for the first time.

After the cave we rode up to Mt. Rushmore. By the time we got up there it was looking pretty stormy, so we decided to get in the building under cover. Good thing we did: hail storms are common up here and we had a pretty good one. Not very large hail, about 3/8′ in diameter, but a lot of it. At one point is was covering the grass like snow, but it melted soon enough once the storm passed. We had to wait awhile but we finally had a break in the rain so we could get down to the amphitheater and sing. We did several pieces a cappella. The choir sounded great, if I do say so myself. I’m pretty sure this is also the first time that Andrew, Thomas & I have sung together. That later became all four of us when Kim joined us on the last piece.

We had planned to stay at Mt. Rushmore and watch the light show that they put on every evening on the mountain, but with more storms coming, Kim decided to head back to the hotel. A good choice as it has been raining pretty hard and lightning off and on since we got back to the hotel.

Tomorrow we head to the Badlands, Wall Drug, and then to Chamberlain to sing at a church we’ve visited every time we’ve come up this way.